se of being the arbitress of his peace:

"I never was happy, at the last. I was afraid."

He dropped her hands.

"What of?" he said to himself stupidly. "In God's name, what of?"

The breaking of his grasp had released also some daring in her. They
were still by the door, but he was between her and the stairs. He caught
the glance of calculation, and instinct told him if he lost her now he
should never get speech of her again.

"Don't," he said. "Don't go."

Again he laid a hand upon her wrist, and anger came into her face
instead of that first candid horror. She had heard something, a step
upstairs, and to that she cried: "Aunt Patricia!" three times, in a
piercing entreaty.

It was not Madame Beattie who came to the stair-head and looked down; it
was Rhoda Knox. After the glance she went away, though in no haste, and
summoned Madame Beattie, who appeared in a silk negligee of black and
white swirls like witch's fires and, after one indifferent look, called
jovially:

"Hullo, Jeff!"

But she came down the stairs and Esther, seeing his marauding entry
turned into something like a visit under social sanction, beat upon his
wrist with her other hand and cried two hot tears of angry impotence.

"For heaven's sake, Esther," Madame Beattie remarked, at the foot of the
stairs, "what are you acting like this for? You look like a child in a
tantrum."

Esther ceased to be in a tantrum. She had a sense of the beautiful, and
not even before these two invaders would she make herself unfitting. She
addressed Madame Beattie in a tone indicating her determination not to
speak to Jeff again.

"Tell him to let me go."

Jeff answered. Passion now had turned him cold, but he was relentless, a
man embarked on a design to which he cannot see the purpose or the end,
but who means to sail straight on.

"Esther," he said, "I'm going to see you now, for ten minutes, for half
an hour. You may keep your aunt here if you like, but if you run away
from me I shall follow you. But you won't run away. You'll stay right
here."

He dropped her wrist.

"Oh, come into the library," said Madame Beattie. "I can't stand. My
knees are creaking. Come, Esther, ask your husband in."

Madame Beattie, billowing along in the witch-patterned silk and clicking
on prodigiously high heels and Esther with her head haughtily up, led
the way, and Jeff, following them, sat down as soon as they had given
him leave by doing it, and looked about the roo